Regex matching beginning AND end strings

Question

This seems like it should be trivial, but I'm not so good with regular expressions, and this doesn't seem to be easy to Google.

I need a regex that starts with the string 'dbo.' and ends with the string '_fn'

So far as I am concerned, I don't care what characters are in between these two strings, so long as the beginning and end are correct.

This is to match functions in a SQL server database.

For example:

dbo.functionName_fn - Match  dbo._fn_functionName - No Match  dbo.functionName_fn_blah - No Match 

Answer 1

If you're searching for hits within a larger text, you don't want to use ^ and $ as some other responders have said; those match the beginning and end of the text. Try this instead:

\bdbo\.\w+_fn\b 

\b is a word boundary: it matches a position that is either preceded by a word character and not followed by one, or followed by a word character and not preceded by one. This regex will find what you're looking for in any of these strings:

dbo.functionName_fn foo dbo.functionName_fn bar (dbo.functionName_fn) 

...but not in this one:

foodbo.functionName_fnbar 

\w+ matches one or more "word characters" (letters, digits, or _). If you need something more inclusive, you can try \S+ (one or more non-whitespace characters) or .+? (one or more of any characters except linefeeds, non-greedily). The non-greedy +? prevents it from accidentally matching something like dbo.func1_fn dbo.func2_fn as if it were just one hit.

Answer 2

^dbo\..*_fn$ 

This should work you.